If Nate Silver is such a "genius" why did he underestimate the GOP's 2010 House gains by 10 seats? It's much easier to make accurate predictions when the team you are rooting for is favored. The media gushes about Silver's accuracy in 2008 and 2012, but never mentions his poor performance in 2010. Let's see how well he does in 2014.

Silver was handed the election returns Axelrod and Plouffe set as benchmarks - some genius.

As for the Hildabeast, she is really showing the mileage and has yet to rack up a real achievement at State. If her next campaign is like her last, she'd do well just to stay home and have fun making Willie's life miserable.

If the election was held today she would win easily against essentially any Republican. She retains almost all of Obama's voters with the exception of those who won't vote for a woman. She picks up at least as many, and I would suspect more, traditional Democrat voters who wouldn't vote for a black. In addition, she will pick up a large fraction of female independents and even some Republicans.

The only thing stopping here at this point is she has to stay alive until 2016, not an actuarially unlikely outcome but not absolutely certain either.

What's "formidable" about the yenta? Her ability to mouth non-stop platitudes while attempting to satisfy her insatiable greed for money be stealing hand over fist; greed for power by way of blackmail, threat and murder; greed for women by keeping an ever rotating harem of lesbians while leering popeyed at every breast that comes within range?

Fixed for truthiness. Not to mention she will trot out the same cavalcade of fear mongering that Urkel put out there. That an evil, dirty, nasty republican will steal your lady parts in the middle of the night, drink the blood of babies, park themselves outside of every drug store, pharmacy, and planned parenthood to keep the ladies from aborting the next democrat generation.

The Democrats should be wary of "the next guy in line for the job" method of picking their candidate. See how well it works for the Republicans!

Also, Obama came outta nowhere to beat Hillary in 2008. Who's to say some charismatic dark horse Dem. candidate won't do it again in 2016?

Ignore punditry that puts some candidate from the NE at the top of the heap. these are the same folks who claimed that Guiliani was the Republican candidate in waiting in 2008. Four years is an eternity in American politics.

I don't get excited about Hillary's prospects for 2016 any more. Her time and moment was 2008 and that was stolen. The same fucking thieves and their footlickers are singing her praise now. Why now? I have a theory about it. It is more of sore winners. They want to rub it in the face of Republicans. They are goading the Repubs about another historical win but they are not all that really excited about her. They are parading her only for one reason, to rub it in the face of the wimpy, loser, neanderthal, racist, sexist Republicans.

==================Corey Booker and Deval Patrick are having their feet licked already by the liberals and progressive Jews running the media, and "opinion deliverer" centers in academia, and celebrityville.

Once you go black, you can never go back.

Of course they are presenting Hillary as being as "inevitable" as she was supposed to be in 2008...better to make her a big fat target that will get pulled down. Not the least by women and blacks that deserted her in droves in the 2008 Dem primaries for their Dream Black Man.

She will suffer not just from being a pedestrian liberal though sans penis and so important from an identity politics niche...but from being older, fatter, and called into account for being stepinn fetchit to Obama....and the public will be as sick of Obama after 8 years as they were with Clinton fatigue and the largely failed Bush Presidency (at least failed in the sense of the colossal bag of shit he handed his successor - conceding in my opinion, that Obama made Bush's dogs breakfast even worse.)

Hard for me to see Hillary winning the nomination. She's looking old and will look even older in 4 years. She's yesterday's news. The Democratic Party moved beyond her with Obama. They ain't going back.

I don't get it, why they think that she would be so formidable. Sure, she would have Bubba working for her. But she isn't black and she isn't Hispanic, and I don't see why the Black or the Hispanic communities would turn out for her in the numbers that Obama needed for his election.

The other thing is that she is old, and will be nearing 70 by the next election. She looks old. How is she going to get that youth vote that was so important? Can she really connect with the young better than a Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio?

She also has a lot of baggage. Numerous financial questions running from their time in Arkansas through her campaign for the Senate. Rose Law Firm billing records, future trading, Vince Foster, White Water Investment, the S&L, Puerto Rican votes for pardons for convicted terrorists, etc. Add to that, that her stint in the Senate was mediocre, and her stint at State was disasterous - and I suspect that the latter will become even more evident over the last four years.

If this last election taught us anything, it's that competence/record don't matter for shit. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Also, we learned that our nation's voters are children. Do you really see any of them giving a rat's ass about Whitewater or Vince Foster or other scandals that few people gave a rat's ass about when they actually happened, decades ago? They care about A. which social tribe they want to identify with and B. who's promising the most freebies. The end.

That whole argument that Obama voters are idiots, they're irrational, they're not competent, that didn't get the Repubs very far in 2012, and that was a mainstream line among the rank and file from what I could see.

You see, Silver is correct, of course, because nothing will change between now and 2016.

Hillary! won't continue to age like a dried apple; the national debt won't accrue $4 trillion more; taxes won't go up; incomes won't go up; the unemployment rate won't significantly budge from 8%; Obama-care won't increase costs, increase delays, and decrease quality; US power overseas won't be less respected; the Iranians won't have a nuclear device; the Iranians won't extort or even annihilate Israel with said nuclear devices; the Euro will continue to be the world's most stable currency...

Any democrat no matter how incompetent or pathological can win in 2016. We're officially an idiocracy now with enough entrenched stupidity that the democrats will have a permanent majority from here on out. They will control the flow information and rewrite history as needed. And the brainwashed masses will swallow it all, hook, line, and sinker.

And a president on permanent campaign instigating is a very low sight indeed.

For me.

I always wanted my presidents to be better than myself in observable ways. Easy enough. So I could look up to them. And the guy we have now is just such a ridiculous schmuck and every single principal around him, and the guy before him and the apparent leadership available and coming up and I just don't see it.

There was Romney briefly there who I didn't know until the end but as I did know him, bit by bit, the things I learned, I then thought, shit man, I wanted the person to be better than me but not that much better than me. I remember his son saying of the first time, "you tried, and they didn't have you." So now that's twice. There really are people out there who offer themselves to service of higher calling, and that's a grueling way to have to put forward an offer, but I do not see anything other than ideology and politics among the Democratic leadership.

Four years from now Hillary will be the Bob Dole of the democrats. Besides if the economy stays the same as it is or worsens as it seems likely to, why would she even want the job? Come to think of it, who would?

No matter how hard they try, four years from now the democrats won't have Bush to kick arround anymore. Four years from now if things stay the same or worse and Chelsea has kids I think Hillary would prefer to be granny and Bill grandpaw. Say what you will, they were good parents to Chelsea while in the White House. And Bill is too smart to encourage her to run when and if she were to win she would be inheriting Barry's economy. I'm sure he would rather bask in the knowledge of being the last succesful two term democrat president.

That whole argument that Obama voters are idiots, they're irrational, they're not competent, that didn't get the Repubs very far in 2012, and that was a mainstream line among the rank and file from what I could see.

Paul-that's what I was getting at. It's gonna get ugly between here and 2016, but I've lost faith that the American people have the critical thinking skills, attention span and interest to bushwhack through all the rhetoric and media baloney to be able to accurately place blame. If they weren't willing to blame Obama/Democrats for the chin-high snowdrift of failures and incompetencies in Nov 2012, why would they do so in 2016? We're headed toward one-party rule until the whole thing collapses, and then we'll see what emerges on the other side.

Erika, yes. Exactly. If you don't know the name Antonio Gramsci, and the Frankfort School investigate them. There's been a long, slow, but wildly successful program to demoralize and destabilize the USA by infiltrating the culture with Marxist critical theory. Oliver Stone has a series on Showtime right now revising American history in the 20th century that is right out of the old Soviet playbook. And you know the soft mushy brains are just soaking it up. This has been going on long enough that the culture has shifted from its freedom-oriented, individualist roots to a collectivist, socialist, welfare mentality that is like a black hole from which there is no escape. We crossed that event horizon last month.

This has been going on long enough that the culture has shifted from its freedom-oriented, individualist roots to a collectivist, socialist, welfare mentality that is like a black hole from which there is no escape. We crossed that event horizon last month.

Oh, we've been on those rails for awhile. Milton Friedman thought the decision point occurred in the '70s, and he was probably right. Socialism is just more facile, and for people who don't follow politics it makes sense. Once you have enough people on the dole there's no going back.

If the election was held today she would win easily against essentially any Republican.

It's true. Republicans would be caught flat-footed, complaining that it was senseless and unconstitutional to have a late 2012 election for a presidency to begin in 2017. Democrats would respond angrily that remarks about holding an election four years early were just code for the sexist stereotype that women take a long time to get ready, and as for pointing out that an election on the 12th wasn't the right time of the month, that's as obvious an assault on ladyparts as anyone has ever committed.

"Oh, we've been on those rails for awhile. Milton Friedman thought the decision point occurred in the '70s, and he was probably right. Socialism is just more facile, and for people who don't follow politics it makes sense. Once you have enough people on the dole there's no going back."

Yes it has been going on a long time and the 60's cultural revolution was the first really large mass expression of its influence.

We did have a shift towards socialism in the 70s followed, by a shift back towards American values after the abject Carter presidency with the election of Reagan and the ensuing resurgence in American power and prosperity.

This time however, rather than doing the obvious thing after four dour years under Obama and electing the only choice for a revival of the American economy and spirit, we doubled down on stupid. We're like Joe Montagna's character in "House Of Games"..."Thank you, may I have another", as he gets pumped full of bullets.

That's why I say we've passed the point of no return. To vote for more of this shit, to believe that Obama with all his bungling, narcissism, corruption, and flat out anti-Americanism deserved reelection proves that America has jumped the shark and Western Civilization's days are numbered.

Because without America to stand in stark contrast to the enervating effect socialism has on the economies and spirit of the populations under its thrall there is nothing to stop its creep until it engulfs the world and we all become slaves.

We did have a shift towards socialism in the 70s followed, by a shift back towards American values after the abject Carter presidency with the election of Reagan and the ensuing resurgence in American power and prosperity.

The shift back was illusory. Even under Reagan the government never shrank. It just grew a little more slowly.

The growth of government is not the only metric. Economic growth and and people's optimism for the future are more important in the final analysis.

But the growth of the government is the most important metric. If you let it grow unbounded eventually it will suck the air out of the economy, as it has. And with that goes the optimism.

The '80s also saw the imposition of all sorts of new laws and powers for the government to crawl up your financial nether region looking for a few shekels you might not have declared. I mean, new money laundering laws.

Don't kid yourself. Reagan was better than Carter, but there was no deviation from Hayek's road.

Eric, I agree to a point. Had we elected Romney it would have indicated that we we're aware of the need to curtail the size and scope of government, but obviously the electorate has been dumbed down sufficiently to not even recognize the need for a change in direction.

At least in 1980 we knew we had to change course and the Republicans won in a landslide.

I was talking to international banking friends this weekend, Obama supporters, who have pre-baked in the assumption that the next four years are going to be terrible economically and there's nothing Obama can do about it.

If that's the way things are presented, then I don't see why the Democratic party will suffer as a result of his failures.

In fact, he (and they) will be better off if we never substantially recover from 2008 than if we recover for a while and then sputter into a new recession.As long as they can point at the 2008 recession being the problem, they can avert the blame and gain the electoral advantage.

That's something worth thinking about when we look at Obama's agenda for the next four years. Mysterious as it is right now.

This time however, rather than doing the obvious thing after four dour years under Obama and electing the only choice for a revival of the American economy and spirit, we doubled down on stupid. We're like Joe Montagna's character in "House Of Games"..."Thank you, may I have another", as he gets pumped full of bullets.

That was a great movie, except for the lead actress, who was the director's wife, I think.

I agree with Nate Silver. She'd be hard to beat, I think. I don't see how she'd lose any of the people who voted for Obama.

Any? She isn't Black. She isn't Hispanic. She isn't young, and will be getting ever more unyoung over the next 4 years.

Oh, and she isn't honest. That may be a feature, and not a bug, in Illinois (where she grew up), New York (which she represented in the Senate), and California. But there are still 47 other states.

The Dems really shocked the Republicans this election with their GOTV. It sure shocked me - most of the people I knew who bought into the Hope and Change in 2008 switched to Romney in 2012, and yet Obama still won.

Part of what the Dems were able to do was to motivate the Blacks to vote in near record numbers again, and to get these other demographics to do so too - Hispanics, youth, Julias, etc. Why would they keep their enthusiasm though? A couple of percent here and there would have been all it took for Obama to have lost.

Add in the obvious - the economy is likely to still be in the crapper, with the longest recovery since FDR and the Great Depression. And why? Aren't some of these people going to see the obvious, that the similarity between the two is gross mismanagement of the economy? Plus, by then, Obama and the Dems will have run up roughly half the national debt that the U.S. will have incurred since its founding. Vote for Hillary, so that it can be roughly 2/3 by the end of her term?

Back to turnout. It will only take a couple percent around the margins in each of these demographics to swap the next election. Might running a candidate maybe 20 years younger, who actually understands the economy, etc. attract some of the youth vote? A minority attract some of the Black or Hispanic vote? Or, if not attract, at least leave them at home?

Besides, I don't think that Hillary! was all that great of a campaigner. And, nearing 70, she will likely be a lot less energetic than whoever the Republicans run.

Hillary was gift-wrapped the nomination for 2008, and she farked that one up. What makes anyone think she'll be soooo much better in 4 years? She wouldn't have vast right-wing conspiracies to blame for all the accumulated krep from 8 years of Democratic rule.

The only way she looks good is if Joe Biden shakes out to be her main opponent.